Sharing my journey through life.

Most the time it’s a good thing. But sometimes it causes me to make stupid choices.

Like the time I quit writing copy so I could “go all in” on my dream of starting a marketing agency.

I remember this well because it was just last year!

I was working full-time as a freelance copywriter but was going through one of my usual “young-life crisis.”

“I don’t want to be a freelancer anymore. I feel like I’m supposed to be an entrepreneur,” I told my wife. “I want to build something bigger than myself.”

We talked about it a lot and I finally convinced her to let me hire a business coach who specialized in helping freelancers build “productized businesses,” something I really wanted to do.

So we took a risk and spent about $6,000 on the coaching program.

During the program I decided I was going to go all in and fire myself as a copywriter so I could assume the role of CEO of my new company (which consisted of an idea in my head!).

My idea was to build a marketing agency for insurance agents (since that was the industry I knew best). So I did. I stopped prospecting and stopped doing work as a copywriter.

Instead I spent hundreds of hours building a new website and creating a course. My coach advised me to start with a course so I could get paid to learn what my target audience really wanted/needed in a service.

I thought it was a great idea. So I made my first course.

It was a 6-week program called the Insurance Funnels Academy. I invested a lot of time into this and was expecting to make a lot more than I did.

I sold it for $1,900 each but had to pay $340 to one of my partners for his part in helping me teach it. So I would net $1,560 after paying him.

I thought, Man, if I sell 20 of these that’d be $31,200! Even if it’s only 10 that’ll still be $15,600.

I was optimistic. Until I got closer to the deadline. I didn’t sell 20, or 10.

I sold 3!

And it wasn’t a recorded course. It required me to do live trainings and coaching calls. It was a lot of work for $4,680.

I eventually sold one more after the initial class (because I forgot to take the sales page down). And I was so desperate for money I ended up doing a 2nd class just for this one student. The good news was that I didn’t have to pay the $340 that time since I was able to teach the whole course myself.

So I got to “keep” the whole $1,900.

Bottom line: I quit taking on copywriting jobs because I was sure this would take off right away. My goal was to go from zero to $83,334 in monthly recurring revenue within 12 months. Ha!

I totally failed that goal.

I ended up only making $6,580 from the online course sales that year (Apr – Dec). I made another $13,220 during that time period from some of the services I was able to sell to agents, bringing the total profit to $19,800 for my new agency.

Those months between April and December last year were hell.

My wife stays at home with our three kids so I’m the sole provider. And so when our income dropped off it created a ton of stress!

I never want to repeat that scenario.

Thankfully we were able to recover. I snapped out of my stupidity and started writing copy again.

I put Insurance Funnels on the back-burner and focused on booking myself solid with copywriting jobs.

Since then my income has been pretty good. I’ve been able to pay myself a consistent salary every month.

However, I still haven’t lost sight of my dream of moving away from being self-employed to being a business owner.

But this time I have to fight my urge to just “go all in” and fire myself as a copywriter again.

Instead I tell myself that I have two jobs. My main “day job” as a copywriter. And my other job is building a business that isn’t contingent on me doing all the work.

I still own Insurance Funnels and it’s actually proved to be a profitable endeavor. I have a couple clients who went through my Academy who decided to hire me to build their websites and manage their digital marketing on a monthly basis.

This has provided a nice steady stream of recurring revenue to supplement my freelance copywriting work.

But my main focus is to launch Advisors Grow. I still plan to grow Insurance Funnels but I really want to get Advisors Grow off the ground first.

The reason I share all of this is because even though being an “all or nothing” type of person can be an asset at times it can also be a liability.

I refuse to ever put my family in that situation I put them in last year because of something that “might happen.” It’s irresponsible. But I learned and I’m moving forward.